Hard times acoming?

Jack Deatherage

Let us close our game of poker, take our tin cups in our hand
As we all stand by the cook's tent door
As dried mummies of hard crackers are handed to each man.
O, hard tack, come again no more!
'Tis the song, the sigh of the hungry:
"Hard tack, hard tack, come again no more."
Many days have you lingered upon our stomachs sore.
O, hard tack, come again no more!

(9/2022) The offspring tells me songs trigger stories that play out in video form in his mind. I figure him growing up on video games and movies more than books and storytelling has something to do with the way his mind works. In my case, a song is more likely triggered by something I've read or seen. "Hard Crackers" (first stanza and chorus opening of this meander) sprang to mind after a friend asked me where he could get bulgur flour.

Bulgur is one of the flours I've heard of, but never explored. A little research into bulgur flour and I find it's merely a whole wheat grain that's been parboiled and dried. Seems to me a sprouted wheat would be of more benefit, but what do I know?

Anyhow, I asked why someone avoiding wheat carbs would be wanting bulgur, or any other such grains.

"I've got a survival foods book that recommends bulgur wheat for making hard tack." Comes the reply.

Hard tack triggers the Civil War parody of Stephen Foster's song "Hard Times". Down the prepper/survivalist rabbit hole I race! Though it's not as if I haven't been looking into stockpiling some basic food stuffs. Especially after Covid knocked us down and the DW and I both lost 10-pounds from not eating even when we were up to actually cooking- everything tasted like salt! (Canned foods that don't require heating are now on hand against another bout of the engineered virus.)

A few hours online reading about the how and why of hard tack had me considering putting by a few pounds of the "tooth breakers" against the bad days I suspect are coming, but hope they won't. I began with the simplest of recipes:

240 grams -Whole Meal Flour

175 milliliters -Water

1.5 teaspoons –Salt

Mix, roll out about 1/2" thick, cut into cracker sized pieces, prick with fork tines, place on a baking sheet. Bake at 375-F for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 350-F. Flip crackers, continue baking for 30 minutes. Cool on wire rack and keep in an air tight container.

I was pleasantly surprised by the flavor- almost nutty. Hmm... what if I add rye flour? Or some on the powdered sweet potato I recently made? I took samples of three variations to my prepper friend. Other variations are in the works.

Rusk is another flour based food I read about when first trying to get a hold on my bobble-headed diet. And as it happened, I found a twisty tied plastic bag containing several challah slices I planned to use for French toast. The bag was buried under empty bags on a downstairs kitchen counter. I'd dried and bagged the bread a year and a half ago!

"Ah HA!" I waved the brittle slices over my head.

"You're not going to eat that are you?" The DW had her 'resigned' look firmly in place.

The bread had a crisp snap to it when I broke off a piece. No mold. Smelled like challah, but the flavor wasn't what I expected- slightly sour. Then again, it's been so long since I made the bread I've forgotten which recipe I used and how it had tasted when first sliced, and Covid seems to have changed my senses of smell and taste in ways I'm still discovering.

"That bread made the best French toast I've ever eaten." The DW frowned. "But I'm not eating that!"

Meh. I know the bread will keep at least a year if dried out completely and sealed in an airtight container. Rusk, what little of it that is available in this country is usually sold as melba toast, croutons and biscotti- none of which are of interest to me. Not when there's cake rusk to be explored!

While the expanding possibilities of survival hard tack and rusk string out before me the preppers I often chat with remind me of two other items I should give serious thought to- Water and Defense.

"How many gallons of water do you use per day?" A homesteader poses.

"Umm..."

"May the gods help you! 'Cause I live too far away to do it!"

Friend prepper, he shakes his head, amazed I haven't considered this- "Okay. Let's say you have enough food put by to last six months of a serious food shortage. Do you have firearms? If not, get some. And bullets. Thousands of bullets. Why? Because all you've done otherwise is create a food supply for anyone willing to violently take it from you."

Doh. What I have considered is what happens when the power goes off. We no longer have a wood burning stove to heat the house and cook on. I recently showed the DW a camp stove we could afford and store until needed. However, neither of us believes things will get that bad before something besides an economic collapse brings about an end to our mundane toil.

As Puck says, "Lord, what fools these mortals be" given even the government has been urging us to prepare for a food shortage. (Brought on by the World Economic Forum's Great Reset?)

How do we survive if we can't get the drugs and supplements that treat what ails us? What becomes of flushable waste when there's no water to flush with, and worse! the pumps no longer move the waste to the treatment plant? (Gods have mercy on those at the low end of those sewage lines!)

I'm old enough to remember carrying the outhouse buckets to grandfather's compost heap. One of my sisters cooked for a time with a wood-fired stove. I've sipped water from a creek cows used as a toilet- I seriously do not recommend doing that! Having occasionally lived without the conveniences we now call necessities has not prepared me for living as my grandparents once did. Which brings to mind the last verse of Hard Crackers:

But to all these cries and murmurs, there comes a sudden hush

As frail forms are fainting by the door,
For they feed us now on horse feed that the cooks call mush!
O, hard tack, come again once more!
'Tis the dying wail of the starving:
"O, hard tack, hard tack, come again once more!"
You were old and very wormy, but we pass your failings o'er.
O, hard tack, come again once more!

I'll be heating the upstairs come late autumn by making hard tack in case the world comes to the scarcity times my parents and grandparents lived through. The unprepared can have the insects I'm hearing may soon be the peasants ration. Bon appétit!

I'll be singing (off key) "O, hard tack, come again once more!" between mouthfuls of hard tack and the home canned soups we're squirreling away.